Monthly Archives: November 2016

Birth certificate of Carlo's youngest,
born while his father was undercover.

It took the police almost a year to confirm that Carlo Neri was indeed an undercover officer who spied on anti-racist groups and the Socialist Party. After people who had known him and worked with him came to us for support in their investigation, together we exposed him as a spy in Newsnight and the Guardian.

It’s not an easy process to investigate someone you trusted so much, and we have a huge respect for how the people involved pursued their case until they had the answers they were looking for. First and foremost undercover research happens for the people who have been spied upon. It remains a question why the police and the Pitchford Inquiry needed so long to acknowledge something that was proven beyond doubt in January this year.

Subsequent to his retirement from police service in 2007, Bob Lambert – previously an undercover officer with and then operational commander of the Metropolitan Police Special Branch’s Special Demonstration Squad – pursued a second career as an academic, until his exposure as a police spy in October 2011 slowed things down.

The intention is to show how Lambert worked his way into networks and discourse subsequent to his retirement from the Metropolitan Police in a manner consistent with the way he did whilst a serving officer, particularly during his time in the Special Demonstration Squad. It also aims to map how he used a relatively small number of individuals to effect his passage into and through much larger numbers of organisations.

A Metropolitan Police anti-terrorism unit set up in 2002 in the UK after the September 11 attacks to ‘thwart extremist attempts to recruit young British Muslims to violent jihad, by working with Islamic communities.’ The unit worked closely with the Muslim Safety Forum in the aftermath of the 7/7 bombings of July 2005. Similar units were subsequently established by other police forces. In October 2008, the MCU it became part of Counter Terrorism Command and it was “merged into the community engagement team” in 2016.

A pilot to work closely with Muslim communities to push out jihadi recruiters and prevent them from taking over the Finsbury Park and the Brixton Mosques, the Unit has been criticised for its choice of partners to reach this goal.

Furthermore, the MCU was set up by Bob Lambert, the former undercover officer and head of the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS). At least two other members of the Unit were former SDS as well. After the undercover scandal broke and Bob Lambert was exposed, the MCU’s focus on building trust has been questioned – as to how much of it was in fact a sophisticated intelligence operation.

Most of what is known about the MCU is taken from the writings of its founder Bob Lambert, most notably his book Countering Al-Qaeda in London: Police and Muslims in Partnership (2011). As a result this profile may be one-sided at points. If you have additional material please get in touch (PGP key available if you wish).

Last week Pitchford asked families who think their dead child’s identity may have been used by spycops to get in touch. This may be a prelude to names being published, then again Pitchford might decide to keep them under the wraps. It’s a real test of whether the Inquiry is going to side with the police or expose the truth.

This is the new post on the COPS blog looking at what Pitchford is doing, why dead children’s identities were stolen, and the Met’s stonewalling of anyone and everyone on the issue – even bereaved families who are 100% certain their child’s identity was stolen.

Parents who want to know if their dead child’s identity was stolen by undercover police officers have been invited to ask the Pitchford inquiry into undercover policing.

Anyone whose child was born between 1938 and 1975 can do it, as long as they have somehow stumbled across the invitation (ucpi.org.uk > Preliminary Issues > Deceased Children’s Identities > scroll to the bottom of a list of 16 PDFs > click the last one) .

The issue came to light when activists exposed their comrade ‘Rod Richardson’ in 2013. The people who had unmasked Mark Kennedy had become suspicious of someone else they had known who now appeared to have been Kennedy’s predecessor. They found that the real Rod Richardson had died as a baby. Continue reading →

In 2010, Mark Kennedy was exposed as an undercover police office by fellow activists who no longer trusted him. A lot has happened since then. We now know that the Special Demonstration Squad has been infiltrating political campaigns since, in 1968, a demonstration against the Vietnam War got out of hand. Fifteen more so-called spycops have since been uncovered. Using the birth certificates of children who died young, they each adopted a fake identity to live the life of an activist each for about five years.

After a dozen internal police inquiries, and the Metropolitan Police refusing to acknowledge what had happened, then home secretary Theresa May was forced to announce a judge-led independent inquiry into undercover policing in March 2014. The tipping point was the confirmation that Doreen and Neville Lawrence had been spied upon when campaigning for justice for their son killed in a racist attack, as had a lot of other bereaved black family campaigners. So far, the Metropolitan police has done nothing but frustrate efforts to hold spycops to account. A case filed by eight women who were deceived into intimate relationships by these officers ended in an unreserved apology and an undisclosed financial settlement a year ago now. Nonetheless, the end to the court case also meant the police managed to evade disclosure on these secret operations. To this day, the Met still refuse either to confirm or deny whether the men actually were police officers.

While there would not have been an Inquiry without the tireless efforts of those spied upon, whether it is going to bring some truth and justice remains to be seen. The Undercover Research Group supports people in investigating their suspicions about possible undercover officers. Our aim is to know what has happened, to find truth and get justice. The people spied upon found out their groups and their lives had been infiltrated because they no longer trusted someone in their midst. What started with the exposure of Mark Kennedy in late 2010 began an outpouring of revelations of the undercover policing, a scandal which eventually led to the launching of the Pitchford Inquiry, intended to investigate any wrongdoing. It is important not to forget that without these investigations, we would not have an independent inquiry in the first place.

The public inquiry into political undercover policing is already a year in and little progress has been made. The Metropolitan police are engaging in major delay tactics. They are making applications they must know that the inquiry’s Chair, Lord Justice Pitchford, will reject. The latest and most astonishing so far is this one: the police producing anonymous risk assessments arguing for their own anonymity. Continue reading →

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